As Water Loves
by The Hierophant
Summary: There was a time when Lupin would have done anything to see Sirius Black dead.
1. Default Chapter

As Water Loves 

There was a time when Remus would have given anything to see Sirius Black dead. 

i. 

2 November 1981

At half-past one by the ivory-rimmed clock fixed over Gringott's gleaming entrance, Remus gave a musty sigh of defeat, and pulled himself towards the brick wall, out of Diagon Alley, to home. His hair – trimmed neatly for the occasion – was beginning to fall into his eyes in its old untidy manner, and he was half-certain it had grown a little more gray from the morning's efforts. 

When he ducked into the dim interior of the Leaky Cauldron, he stopped, squinting in the sudden darkness and hesitating, fingers feeling the bottom of his emaciated money pouch and lips moving in anxious calculation, before squaring his shoulders and heading to the bar purposefully. Remus asked for a glass of firewhiskey, his ink-smudged copy of the _Daily Prophet_'s Want Ads still clutched disconsolately in his fist. 

He'd crisscrossed Diagon Alley that morning, silently rehearsing answers to possible interview questions, and desperately hoping all the while that they'd neglect to ask for his registration papers from the Ministry of Magic. 

_NAME: Remus J. Lupin. _

_EDUCATIONAL HISTORY: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Prefect, Gryffindor House; 9 O.W.L.s; 9 N.E.W.T.s. (Defense Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, Herbology, Muggle Studies, Potions, Arithmancy, History of Magic). Graduated with Honors and special recommendation from Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. _

An exceptional document thus far, until one reached the text just above the margin, which read

_Social Status: -- warning in flashing red ink that burnt a hole in the parchment --  Werewolf. REGARD WITH EXTREME CAUTION. _

By noon Remus had been turned down fourteen times, and his well-worn shoes had acquired two new holes. 

He grudgingly doled out five Sickles for a drink he could ill-afford, and retreated to a grimy corner table with his glass, his crumpled copy of the Want Ads taunting him with its fourteen crossed-out circles of red ink. 

He hooked one foot over his knee, and had discreetly begun attempting a mortifying Patching Spell on his worn sole, when he overheard the rising murmur that began from Tom at the bar, swiftly spilling over the customers in the seedy pub and bubbling ever higher and harder.

Remus eavesdropped absently; gossip in the Leaky Cauldron was never very informative.

"You-Know-Who gone… and the Potters dead! Yes, all of them…. Heard it from Dedalus Diggle last night…." 

Remus felt his heart turn to stone and sink slowly, coldly, to the pit of his stomach. His lungs were dry leaves blowing through the abrupt, howling emptiness in his ribcage.

" Such a fine family too, and the little boy was taken…. Such a shame, then. Absolutely no one knows where he is."

The tide of words washed over him, violently excited, reveling in the scandal, salt-stung and cruel.

" Yes, but You-Know-Who gone!"

The wave drew back, gathering itself like an animal about to pounce, and fell upon him again, leaving him sea-washed and empty; devoid of any emotion but a fierce and freezing incredulity.    

"Isn't it loverly?" someone crowed. "Never has there ever been a better day than this."

Long after Tom had clambered up onto the bar and joyfully proclaimed every drink was on the house, long after the customers had begun cheering and dancing and hugging one another indiscriminately, long after they had upturned the tables and danced frenzied reels and blew sparklers and dragon-headed firecrackers, Remus sat silent in his lonely corner, one foot still held in a loose palm.   

~~~

1 September 1970

When Remus first started at Hogwarts, he hadn't quite known where to put himself. 

He stood -- a nervous, peaky boy who jumped at small noises and whose fingernails were gnawed to the quick -- in the midst of the cheerful chaos at Platform Nine and Three Quarters. His mother stood behind him, smoothing his hair over and over fretfully, which he wished she wouldn't do, while his father unearthed and reread the Acceptance Letter from the Headmaster as though he could hardly believe it were true, even though the parchment threatened to fall apart if it were unfolded and folded one more time.   

Some of the people at the station were dressed in Muggle clothing, while others, like his own parents, wore normal wizard robes. Three meters away was a middle-aged woman whose black silk train was looped regally over her arm, her other hand gripping the shoulder of the boy who stood beside her. She peered shrewishly over her fur collar at the other people on the platform. Remus was only vaguely aware of her presence, until he heard the woman say: "I do hope you'll have the good grace not to associate with any filth while at school, child."

"Yes mother," the boy agreed dryly. "I'll be certain to restrict my associations with filth only to the holidays."

Now Remus studied the boy more carefully; his parents, absorbed in their anxiety, seemed not to have overheard the peevish exchange. The boy was tall for his age, dark-eyed and dark-haired, and dressed so immaculately it was almost prattish. He looked as though he were going to a small dance, and looked as though he knew it and would rather have gone fishing instead; Remus supposed he would have been handsome for his age if his face weren't knotted into the most ferocious scowl he had ever seen. Before the woman could produce a suitable retort, the boy pushed her hand off his shoulder non-too gently. "I'll take my bags onto the train, now," he said resentfully, and stalked off trailing a trolley of matching dragon leather trunks.     

Remus broke away from his parents as well, hauling his old-fashioned domed-lidded trunk onto the train gingerly, because one of the buckles was apt to snap open at inappropriate moments, and the last thing he wanted was to have his spellbooks and underwear spewed over the platform.   

As he paused, uncertain how to get both ends of the trunk onto the train without pulling up one end or the other first and setting off the troublesome buckle, somebody tapped his shoulder. "Need help with that?" the person said, and Remus turned to find the black-haired boy smirking down at him in a faintly amused, friendly fashion. 

Without waiting for a reply, the boy doubled over, looping his arms around one end of the trunk while Remus caught up the other, and they hauled it onto the train together, pushing it further inward for good measure. They climbed on board after it, and began the long process of kicking it down the corridor towards an empty compartment. "Pureblood, eh?" the boy remarked, nodding at Remus' robes. "Worse luck." At Remus' startled look, the boy explained: "It'd please my mother, you see, and I try to avoid that unhappy circumstance as often as I can.  You seem all right though, so you can stay in the compartment with James and me, if you like.

"Got a name then, Pureblood?"

Remus found himself grinning uncontrollably. "Remus," he supplied hastily. "Remus Lupin." 

The boy grinned back, giving the trunk a particularly vicious kick. 

"Pleased to meet you," he said. "I'm Sirius Black." 

~~~

2 November 1981

Godric's Hollow was serene in the twilight, calm as a frozen river with the rapids tumbling beneath the ice.  

Remus emerged from a curtain of ivy spilling over the wall of a manor house, carelessly untangling himself from the snarl of leaves. He looked left then right, cautious from sheer habit, before pushing the clinging vines from his faded robes and striding up the street and around the corner. A cricket chirped somewhere in the waterfall spill of leaves behind him. 

Two more corners, he thought. Two more until the warm certainty of the Potter's house glowing in the twilight, until he rapped at the front door with his familiar double-knock and James came to open it in welcome, or Lily perhaps, with the tiny dark-haired baby yawning in her arms.  

He really shouldn't have come this late, he thought contritely, wildly. It was well past Little Harry's bedtime and Lily would be tired from feeding times, and James would be exhausted from meetings with the members of the Order…. 

Remus turned the last corner, faced a row of dilapidated cottages, and waited for the houses to shift; for the Potter home to nudge itself into existence.    

There was nothing at first between the Muggle cottages that leapt aside like startled deer. Remus peered through the growing dark, fighting down the strange iciness spreading through his body. There was nothing, nothing at all. The house had vanished entirely. Then he looked down, and saw forsaken rubble, piles of brick and fragments of wood, and James lying open-eyed and still where the entrance hall would have been. His glasses had been knocked askew, dangling off his slack, grey face. 

He found Lily where the nursery had once been. 

As Remus dug through the debris that blanketed half her body _this had happened two _days_ ago how could Dumbledore have not told him where was Sirius where was Peter why had the Order not _told_ him Prongs was dead oh god dead_ he came upon a fragile silver star, one of the dozen that had once hung from the mobile that had been Sirius' present during the baby's christening, when he had been named Harry's godfather. 

Sirius, he remembered, had also been named James' and Lily's Secret-Keeper.  

~~~

10 June 1974

There was a small, private party in Gryffindor Tower the night after the O.W.L.S.  that year. At least, it had started out small. But after Gareth Jordan had begun passing out butterbeers, laced sight unseen with firewhiskey, then the noise level had no alternative but to bubble higher and wilder. 

Remus stood helplessly next to the fireplace, ducking the occasional schoolbook chucked into the fire by an overzealous student. Dorcas Meadowes, one of the older prefects, had draped herself over an armchair and was giggling hysterically at whatever Dewin Murdoch was whispering into her ear. There would, evidently, be no help from that quarter. Lily was nowhere to be seen.    

"Give it up, mate," Prongs hooted, emerging at his left to press a Filibuster Firework into his hand. He had corkscrew streamers hooked in his messy hair, and his glasses were beginning to slip off his nose. "Even prefects have to cut loose once in a while, or didn't you get the memo?"

Padfoot appeared on his right, pressing his half-finished butterbeer into Remus' other hand. "You're fighting a losing battle there, Moony" he yelled affectionately into Remus' ear. "Wouldn't we have loads more fun if you just gave in?" He slung his arm about his friend's shoulders and squeezed companionably.

Remus shrugged amiably, finally surrendering to higher wisdom. He tossed the firework into the fireplace behind him, launching a Catherine wheel that revolved over their heads and showered violet and tangerine sparks over the three laughing boys, and raised the half-empty bottle of butterbeer to his lips. 

At first, licking at the rim of the bottle, he thought that the unfamiliar tanginess over the fizzy sweetness came from Gareth's firewhiskey, and berated Padfoot afterward for having Mickey Finned him. Then later he had another, and another, and realized he could not find the strange flavour in any of the other bottles.      

Then, much later, in a stolen instant sheltered behind his closed bedcurtains, drunk and dizzy and licking into the warm wetness of Padfoot's mouth, Remus understood where the taste had come from. 

~~~

3 November 1981

The next day, Remus fished a discarded newspaper out of a bin in Diagon Alley, and discovered his friend's handsome face laughing at him from the front page. Sirius Black, he read, had been arrested the previous day, and had immediately been given a life-sentence at Azakaban, without trial. 

Remus, in his long and troubled life as a werewolf, had never before felt such fierce and predatory joy.  


	2. Hours Like Wishbones

In the terrible light of the moon, the long hours were wishbones the werewolf snapped wistfully between his jaws. They had never come true before.

ii. 

9 June 1994

There was firelight, and a huge hourglass, and the heap of grading sheets Remus had yet to sort through and fill out. There was a half-eaten bacon sandwich on a plate that teetered precariously on a corner of his desk. Everything looked soft and unsteady in the wavering flickers from the hovering candles in the office; as though the objects in the room were only half-certain of what they would have been in steadier light. The windows had been latched and shaded against the coming moon. 

It was half past eight by the ancient hourglass Remus insisted on using during a particular time of the month; wristwatch bands, if he had forgotten to remove his watch, were liable to snap during his transformations, and he could ill-afford to keep replacing them. The hourglass was enormous: four feet high and unbreakable, and normally kept concealed in a wooden cabinet where he also kept his spare boggarts and shrimp-smelling sacks of grindylow feed. He could force the malicious creatures into a spare desk drawer at a pinch. Remus, his fingers scrabbling like crab feet as he pulled the parchment grading sheets toward him, vaguely fretted that Severus had not yet arrived with his Wolfsbane Potion. 

When he fumbled about absently for his quill, preparing to record Neville Longbottom's full marks (warranted for effort) his fingers encountered the familiar folded parchment instead, weighted down under the inkstand. Remus jerked his hand back as though it had been singed, studying the parchment apprehensively and nibbling at a fingernail; a nervous habit he had been unable to break. He counted consequences, considering the likelihood of Harry disobeying instructions, and how much he would have to hurry to catch up with his work -- glancing at Neville's grading sheet ruefully -- before coming to a decision.

Remus moved his work carefully to one side before nudging over the inkstand and hauling the Marauder's Map out from under it. It was strange how little the crevices of the folds in the parchment had frayed over the years. Dozens of tiny dots crawled over the surface of the parchment, pismire versions of the actual occupants of the castle. He scanned the library and Gryffindor Tower, before moving his eyes over the grounds around Hagrid's hut. 

He found _Harry Potter_, _Hermione Granger_ and _Ron Weasley_ huddled so tightly together that their names overlapped, moving across the grounds swiftly, towards Hagrid's hut. Behind the building the hippogriff Buckbeak moved about restlessly, tethered, perhaps, in the pumpkin patch. 

Remus kept an unsteady watch for ten minutes, an eye out for any dementors who had moved past the gates into the school grounds, and penitently inking in Neville's grades and progress report. Then Finnegan's. Then Patil's. The children had not yet emerged from the gamekeeper's hut.  

Ten more minutes passed, and Remus had become absorbed in casting about for diplomatic terms to describe Gregory Goyle's progress in his class, when he caught sight of _Albus Dumbledore, Cornelius Fudge, Carolus Quarry _and _Walden MacNair_ moving across the parchment. He dropped his quill, spattering Theodore Nott's record sheet, and pulled the Map towards him. 

His eyes widened in disbelief at the four dots leaving the hut, hurrying jaggedly along the edge of the forest.  

And further away, in the trees, he caught sight of someone else he had never expected nor hoped to ever see in Hogwarts again.   

~~~  

12 June 1976

"Why are we doing this?" 

The dormitory had been, thankfully, empty. James and Lily had run off somewhere to be alone, and by various unfair machinations, which included drugging his drink at the Leaving Feast, they had managed to throw off Peter. So they had the room to themselves. 

Sirius ran the palm of his hand over the side of Remus' thigh, pulling it up, gently, towards his chest, opening him again. He eased nearer to him, into him, tepid stickiness pulling wherever their skin touched. Remus closed his eyes when Sirius mouthed his shoulder messily; it had been good earlier in the evening, but now he was too tired and it had happened too many times to be anything but sore. He wondered whether he would be able to walk in the morning. 

"What do you mean?" Sirius panted, and twisted within him, suddenly. Remus shuddered with pleasure, despite himself. "I should think the _why_ would be self evident. Don't you?"  

I'll have to stand on the Hogwarts Express all the way home, he thought wearily. No way I'm sitting down on a jolting train after this.       

"What I meant was," Remus began hesitantly, voice muffled between his forearms, "are we doing this because it's fun, or because it means something?" The rocking motion carrying them both stopped. Remus plowed on gamely. "Are we still going to be doing this after tomorrow? Are we ever going to be out in the open about this?" 

There was silence from the boy behind him. 

"And what if we did tell everyone?" Sirius asked behind him, coolly, furiously. "What did you think would happen? That I'd sweep you off your feet, ask you to stay in my stinking little flat in the London alleys, that Lily and James and Peter would throw us a big housewarming party and we'd live happily ever after?"  Sirius pulled out, and rolled onto his back, away from him. "In case you never knew, Moony, happy endings don't happen to people like us." 

Remus felt very cold.   

The mattress lurched as the body beside him shifted uneasily. "I don't know what's wrong with you. I thought we were just having fun," Sirius whispered fiercely. 

"We _were_ having fun," he answered meekly. "I just wanted to know what to expect after tomorrow." He reached behind him blindly, running a cajoling hand over Sirius' arm. "Come back now. Please."  

After a sullen moment, Remus felt a warm body press clammily against his back, and the familiar bitter burn. He gritted his teeth, savouring the unpleasant sensations. He had thought he would never feel them again after that night.   

~~~

9 June 1994

"Where is he, Sirius?" 

Blacker even than his name and gaunt as a lightning-struck tree, he never took his eyes off the wand Remus kept aimed at his heart, and warily pointed, with a finger trembling with certainty, at the boy lying on the floor. 

"There." 

Remus turned cautiously, squinting through the flying dust motes and fragments of cobweb at the shrilling rat Ron kept clutched to his chest. 

"But it couldn't be…" he found himself saying aloud, even as the startled hope that had begin to flutter in his throat half an hour ago, bent over the Marauder's Map, flickered upward higher and faster. He could hardly speak around its beating wings. 

"But then…," Remus stuttered, eyes fixed on the man he had hated, burned for, for over twelve years, "… why hasn't he shown himself before now? Unless… unless he was the one… unless you switched… without telling me?"

The man nodded slowly, wordlessly.

He reached for Sirius, then, gathering up a body he could barely feel beneath the filthy, ragged robes, into a fierce embrace. He could feel hair caked and matted with dirt, and the sour scent of unwashed skin. The man in his arms was muddy and soiled and bedraggled, a far cry from the beautiful boy Remus had ached over eighteen years ago, but he felt as though he could have anchored himself to him forever. 

~~~

The wolf ran through the purlieus of the forest, flying over fallen leaves and broken branches, the flinty scent of the moon full and sweet in his nostrils. The moon smelt of blood and salt, of the sea she drew with countless predators' eyes glimmering in the darkest depths.  

The big black dog bounded in his wake, relentless in its chase. The wolf dimly remembered there being other beasts before, a stag that leapt and kept him inexorably at bay with its arrow-sharp antlers, and a rat that squeaked and cowered fearfully in corners and the crooks of tree roots whenever he snapped at it in annoyance. 

But tonight there was only the dog following his footfalls.

He turned into a thicket of trees, sprinting onward a few more yards, then doubled back upon himself with lupine cunning, paws darting surely over the silent forest floor, to crouch behind the trunk of an oak tree. Stilling the anticipatory growl that hummed deep in his throat, the wolf waited with the twitching patience of birds. 

An owl flew overhead; small animals scuttled in the undergrowth, away from the coming battle. The wolf parted his jaws to lick at his ebony lips, his ivory fangs. His tongue tasted mud and thistles in the night wind, and the salty promise of blood.   

After an age, the big, black dog padded forward into the clearing, the wolf's living shadow that had been unwillingly cut free. It looked to the left, then to the right, an anxious whine rising from its throat. It panted in the open air, breath rising in clouds of steam, raising its muzzle to sniff at the clouds and moonlight.   

The werewolf gathered himself, power and blood pooling in the sickle-curves of his haunches. The hunger-water a sweet pool in his mouth, the wolf coiled back, and leaped. 

Although his claws scraped at the dog's ribs, his fangs clicked over empty air. The dog had turned at the last moment, rolling over on its back and scrambling to right itself. It turned, snarling and slavering at its attacker, fur rising over its scarred, scrawny flanks; the wolf's paws were speckled with scarlet, and he could have howled for satisfaction if the battle were over. But it was not over. 

Again and again, they flew at each other, foreclaws and backclaws raking at tender underbellies and catching in the crevices between their ribs. But though the werewolf's teeth groped and nibbled towards the dog's tender throat and the hot vein within it, the dog twisted and flailed like a salmon on a fishing line to avoid his bite, and did not bite back. 

Finally, the dog tore itself from the wolf, losing patches of fur in its retreat, and pulled back, licking at a wrenched paw. It scampered to the edge of the forest clearing back in the direction of the castle, injured and exhausted. It looked back at the wolf, wretchedly, regretfully, before it loped away in defeat.

~~~

10 June 1994 

Hours later, awake and human, Remus found blood caked beneath his fingernails. 

He made this belated discovery lying in his musty bed, on the morning he was to leave Hogwarts. He knew Peter had escaped, all through his carelessness. He knew the Sirius and the children had nearly been kissed by the Death Eaters, because he had neglected to take his potion. He knew Sirius was once again a fugitive, and likely never to have a proper home and a little peace while Fudge remained Head of the Ministry. He knew he had tendered his resignation to Dumbledore. He knew that he ought to get up and make his way to his office, and gather his belongings to leave the room clean for its next occupant – most likely Severus. Perhaps it was this last thought that made him lift his hands above him instead, and spend long minutes studying the sanguinary crescents that tipped his fingers. 

Absently, almost as though he had no idea what his hand and mouth were doing, Remus scraped the underside of his fingernails against the edge of his lower teeth and, suckling carefully, neatly lapped the blood up. When his hands were clean, he got up and dressed, and went off to drain and collect his grindylow tank.

Remus also keeps his secrets.

  



End file.
